My husband has this regular customer at the ski shop where he works. Real nice guy. My husband has fit boots for the whole family, re-outfits them with skis every few years. They talk a lot about biking, and the guy has asked my husband to take him out mountain biking, show him some good trails, etc. Hub said he'd be happy to show him around, maybe afterwards his wife (that would be me) could whip up some dinner. Not that my husband ever mentioned any of this to me. Until last night.

We stopped at the little high-priced food emporium in the village to pick up a bottle of wine for dinner at a friend's house. Hub snagged a brochure for some of the cheese they carry. When we got home last night, he was leafing through the brochure, which happens to be from Artisanal. “Oh, cool, there's Terry!”, he says. Huh? Terry wha who? What?

So he tells me all about this guy, this regular customer, and the biking blah-de-blah, yeah, the guy's a chef in New York somewhere. That's him in the brochure.

It's Terrance Brennan.

I think Flanders and Swann actually put their own words (or Flanders' words, anyway) to "Let's Do It". From memory, it's either on Drop of Another Hat or some other anthology - not on At the Drop of a Hat. I used to have this stuff on cassette, but it all wore out of course.

A couple of weeks ago my father came to visit me here in DC. We were walking along Pennsylvannia Ave talking about those Segway thingies for some reason . My father said he had read about them and seen them on TV, but had never seen one in person. At that very moment we heard an "excuse me" and a guy whizzed by us on a Segway. We were dumbfounded.

You can do Segway tours of Paris. I saw a group whizzing past me by the jardins de Luxembourg (I think) once.

Flicking through channels and caught this verbatim Entertainment Tonight teaser: "The pressures on Mary-Kate Olson, is she too thin? Michael Jackson's ex -- blown up like a balloon! Jessica Simpson -- the anorexia rumors. And Carnie Wilson -- her crusade to raise awareness about gastric bypass surgery." How's that for fair and balanced?

Mildly ironic, but more surreal.

Finished work at an hour wherein we could still get a cold one. We dash over to the nearest and newest watering hole faster than our stray dumpster cats can run away to save themselves.

They were winding down, but still open. The GM/recently turned part owner was sitting a few stools away. He seemed rather jolly and his irreverant self. Our fav lead bartender/also recently turned part owner was tending. The GM told one of us to go behind the bar and pour our own draft and then picked up the bottle of Cuervo and placed it in front of us. We giggle at these antics as they closed their blinds, kicked out the rest of the patrons and locked the door.

The GM was making fun of the music box selections and ejected two songs. He found Kenny Rogers' Gambler and got everyone singing while standing on the bartop. He plays it three times in a row followed with a Kenny Rogers ballad (not familiar with his work intimately, I couldn't guess the title).

All the while their silent, very low key barback was going about his closing chores without even acknowledging all of this activity.

We sit down to finish our beers and then watch the GM and bartender whipping pint glasses at the distant brick wall to amuse themselves.

Yup, it was time to go.

Trying to pick out a Valentine's card for my DH when I'm so mad at him I could spit. But tomorrow morning I'll wake up still loving him. If he's lucky.

This might have gone in the Annoyances thread, but just try picking out a card for someone to tell them how much you love them when you'd really like to see them tarred and feathered.

Gosh! What'd he do?

Nothing I won't get over.

Our IT guy just informed us that we need to make sure the windows are closed when we leave the office on Friday "because of helicopters".

Because... thieves will use helicopters to climb into your open windows?
Because... saboteurs will lob bombs through open windows but they will bounce harmlessly off closed ones?
Because... spies will take surveillance photos only through open windows so you'll be safe if they are closed?
Because... helicopters would be helplessly sucked into your office through black holes created by open windows?

Am I getting warmer?

Fly

Who knows? Apparently building management told him there is going to be some sort of "helicopter show" over the weekend. (What the... helicopters fly over downtown San Francisco every hour of every day! What are they going to do? Land the things in the courtyard?)

Anyway, apparently building management are concerned that "dust will be blown in through the windows."

Update on the helicopters: Okay, our IT guy is not always the best communicator. A memo from the building management reveals that helicopters will be performing an "equipment lift" from an adjacent building on Saturday (apparently a big deal... surrounding streets will be closed to traffic, etc.), and we're advised to close the windows to prevent the winds from the rotors creating a mess in the office.

Lawsy, that actually makes sense now. Hoodathunkit?

Fly

In-laws in Tuscany are cooking porchetta for a dinner party tomorrow. As it looks so good, I asked to see the recipe. This turns out to be a fax of a hand written recipe that I wrote two years ago in Australia, which I based on the memory of eating a Tuscan porchetta.

Also an observation. In Scotland I have to cut the nipples off the pork belly, in Tuscany this doesn't seem to be an issue.

Memory dragged up by the "underrated movies thread"

Sat. Sept 7, 1986 my 16th birthday.
Had a cross-country meet in the morning, came home and my entire family had forgotten my birthday.

Sitting at home alone, wallowing in my own misery.

Turn on TV, turn dial on cable box to HBO and what's on -- Sixteen Candles

Went to pick up my dry cleaning last week in between a doctors appointment and night school. This particular dry cleaners has an insanely narrow parking lot that makes it impossible for more than one person to go in or out of at a time. Trying to do so in the dark is even worse. I, of course, had exactly 5.3 minutes to get in and out of the cleaners so I could make it to class on time (where I was going to eat my dinner of what turned out to be lousy sushi, but more on that in a minute).

Given my time crush there was the inevitable parking lot moron who couldn't get out of their space. As I watched this person try to get out I thought the only other person who could unpark this badly is my mother. Just as I am completing this thought the car finally pulls out and I realize that it is my mother.

So I honk, wave, and rush into her space. She had taken up 2.3 of my time alotment. I run in, grab my laundry and run out.

Back on the road I do what every good, modern daughter does: picked up my cell phone, called my mother, made fun of her parking skills and tried to figure out why she drove 1/2 hour from her house to get my father's shirts cleaned. We talk for awhile until she tells me she has arrived at the restaurant she was heading to. Turns out it is the same lousy sushi place I had stopped in before the cleaners.

You made all that up, didn't you?

Overheard in the last few minutes:

Editor - That's a great photo of (UK celeb).

Picture Editor - Thanks. It took me ages to find it. Most of the photos were awful. She's so skinny she looks absolutely horrible in most of them. It's still pretty retouched, though.

Editor - Well she looks good in that one. Well done.

( )

I have to walk through Tobacco Dock every morning. A surreal experience in itself in that it is a deserted place, once converted into a shopping arcade but closed down a few years back, the radio is always playing, it is quite spooky. Anyway, walking through this morning there was a man just standing there with a huge bird of prey on his hand acting as though it was the most normal scenario in the world.

Scaring off pigeons.

v

Or ants.

*ducks & runs*

v

coworker just claimed that it was cheaper to buy breakfast ($2.50 for egg and bacon on a bagel) than to make it. I pointed out that eggs cost about 12 cents a piece and she responded that it only works out cheaper if you make it everyday instead of buying it. If you buy a dozen eggs and half a dozen bagels and some bacon, make one sandwhich and throw the rest out when it goes bad because you NEVER EVER cook, then it's definitely more expensive to make it youself. I can't fault her logic.

An email arrived at 7pm last night from a newspaper called La Prensa in Panama, asking for a photo of a dish I did for my Tsunami fundraising menu. The story, as I was told, would run this Saturday, so she needed a high resolution photo by the morning!

I haven't got any phto for them, the files were corrupted, so I had to make the dish in a hurry. Drove out to May Wah on Clement to find the ingredients, only to find the market closing down and couldn't really get what I needed. So I ended up scrounging around the fridge to see what I could do to at least make the dish look good, never mind how it tastes.

So I got a piece of fish, mashed it up. Found a bit of leftover curry paste from a couple weeks back, nevermind that it's a wrong sort, it's red enough! Mixed them together. Had no long beans, so I used a few snow peas. Found some lime leaves in the freezer, so cut a few in chiffonade, and in they went in the paste.

The ajaad salad also got made in a hurry, didn't even bother to taste anything.

The oil got heated up, fried three lumps of fish cakes, looked good enough, so the rest went into the dump.

Set up some light, snapped a few shots, off to Photoshop to check the quality, back to the light to adjust a couple things, snappy snap some more. This time they looked fine, well as good as it was gonna get anyhow. So off they went to Panama in an email attachment. Look, ma, I'm a food stylist!!

Honestly, they were the most disgusting Tod Mun I've ever tasted! ick...yuck....

lunching on just ramen and hot hot green tea has similiar effects to drinking alchohol- my cheeks are flushed, when I stepped into the cold air I was kept warm from the inside out, and I joked with strangers in the elevator.

mmmmm.

As I left the restaurant after having had a pretty bad dining experience (If I have time I'll post the meal). In fact one of the worst in a long time (just one mediocre dish after the other. Talk about scraping the middle of the barrel)); I came across this laminated on a piece of wood and proudly hanging with the photos of Julia Child and Jacques Pepin.

Replete with organization logo and prominentely displayed

'nough said ...till you have time to give us a true picture! I feel Julia spinning...

Snow

v

I know, but its already stopped where I am (Russell Square).